Overview
About Arbaer Open Air Museum
Saving the disappearing town
The museum opened in 1957 after concern that redevelopment was erasing old Reykjavík. The city restored Árbær farm and gradually brought threatened buildings to the site: Smiðshús arrived in 1960 and Dillon's House in 1961. More than twenty buildings now form a town square, a village and a rural setting. Many originally stood in central Reykjavík. Their relocation created a collection through which changes in housing, work and urban society could be studied together.
A farm beneath the museum
The Árbær farmhouses are the museum's buildings that remain in their original positions. Archaeological investigations indicate occupation at the site in the tenth century, although whether that earliest settlement was permanent or temporary remains uncertain. This distinction matters: the museum combines the history of a particular farm with buildings gathered from elsewhere. Its village arrangement therefore presents selected parts of Reykjavík's past rather than an entire neighbourhood preserved exactly as it once stood.
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